It is amazing to read assertions from the Fed and others that the stock market is nowhere near being in a bubble. Several aspects of the financial environment are actually so extreme as to be unprecedented. Some indicate a bubble, and others a bubble in trouble.

Below are eight indicators we are watching closely, among others.

1) Record debt in U.S. dollars

Total dollar-denominated debt peaked at $52.7 trillion in early 2009. At the end of Q1 2015, it stands at $59 trillion, an unprecedented amount.

Well, it's the last trading day of the month and judging by the volume this month, hasn't been a particularly great month for anyone. Looks like stocks are going to close out August with a 2% gain on the S&P 500. More interestingly the gold market is up over 4% for the month!

It seems as though the markets are saying in gold we trust and not Bernanke.

When everyone returns from their Labor Day weekend, we expect the markets to have more volume and activity. At the moment, August will go in the books as one of the lowest volume months ever!

When we return in September the market will be fixated on the ECB and what Mario Draghi and Europe may or may not do.

That is what I love about the markets, they are never boring.

To all our American members and readers, enjoy a safe and happy Labor Day.

A number of years ago, there was a market guru named Joseph Granville who came up with the phrase "bag holder". I've always loved the term because it really describes exactly what's happened to a lot of investors in social media these days. Yes, they've been left holding the bag and the bag has little or nothing in it!

Social media has been decidedly unsocial to investors. So what's the ahead for the likes of Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and other public social media companies?

Let's take a look at Groupon first. I think that merchants really don't want to discount to such a degree that they lose money on promoting their businesses. The people who use Groupon don't come back. So the basic business model has a fundamental flaw as it is being repudiated by the very companies it was supposed to help. Continue reading "MarketClub TV for 8/22/12: Just how unsocial is social media?"→

Depending on who you speak to, the stock market is either going to fall off a fiscal cliff or the stock market is going to make new highs.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Right now, the markets are in very broad trading range without any clear-cut trend. The intermediate-term trend is positive, however that trend is tempered by the longer term trend that we follow. The long-term trend indicates that the stock market remains in a bear market and that the current rally is just a counter-trend rally in a bear market.

San Bernadino, a city of 210,000, just filed for chapter 9 bankruptcy on Tuesday. If you are keeping score, that is 3 cities in a row in just as many weeks that have filed for bankruptcy. Do you think there are going to be more in the coming weeks and months?

Remember Denise Rich? She is the same lady who was married to Marc Rich, who was once a tax fugitive. She is the one who donated a boat load of money to President Clinton, who then pardoned her ex-husband. Well, it looks like she just renounced her American citizenship for family (tax?) reasons... If we keep banging on the wealthy folks in America, pretty soon we won't have any left to support the politicians.